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Strength Based Approaches to Capacity Building

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Capacity building/development is the process of developing competencies and ... and adjust/improvise?' Sustaining. Positive Core '5 D' Cycle. Define. Topic Choice ... – PowerPoint PPT presentation

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Title: Strength Based Approaches to Capacity Building


1
Strength Based Approaches to Capacity Building
  • A Paradigm Shift in our Development Approach to
  • Capacity Building
  • Christopher Dureau
  • Engineers without Borders Conference
  • November 2007

2
A definition of Capacity Building
  • Capacity building/development is the process of
    developing competencies and capabilities in
    individuals, groups, organisations, sectors or
    countries which will lead to sustained and
    self-generating performance improvement.
  • AusAID, February 2004

3
Historical Context Technical Support
  • 60s In line positions/Tech Assistance
  • Another teacher in the school, a departmental
    manager
  • Doing the job of a local.
  • 70s Tech Advisor/Counterpart Support
  • Working along side a designated in line position
  • Doing the job with a local person
  • 80s Institutional Advisor/Systems Revised
  • Curriculum advisor, policy development specialist
  • Writing the guidelines for a new approach

4
Emergence of Capacity Building
  • Challenge of the mid 90s
  • Becomes the central purpose for technical
    cooperation (UNDP 1998)
  • Beginning to put emphasis on improving the
    overall systems, environments and context in
    which individuals, organisations and societies
    operate
  • AusAID moves away from staffing assistance to
    capacity advisors
  • World Bank, UN, ADB, CIDS, DIFID...AusAID all
    make capacity building central to their programs
    of ODA

5
Capacity Development in the 2000s
  • Paris Declaration March 2005
  • Ownership
  • partners have leadership of donor programs
  • Alignment
  • project objectives same as partners
  • Harmonisation
  • all donors work cooperatively
  • Managing for Results
  • both agree on desired results
  • Mutual Accountability
  • both take responsibility for the outcomes
  • And indicators set for each.

6
Comparing
  • Technical Assistance Approach (traditional)
  • Delivers goods and services tangible outcomes
  • In Parallel to government programs
  • Limited time and defined contract
  • One teacher one learner
  • Working from the outside in supply
    driven/planned
  • Capacity Building Approach (since late 90s)
  • Begins by acknowledging local knowledge/wisdom
  • Integrate with local practice and builds on local
    assets
  • Systemic or holistic
  • Two learners (technical/local) teaching each
    other
  • Working from the inside out demand driven/
    discovered

7
Capacity Building
Goal
Who are the People
How to improve their Relationships
Review and Revise until it works to deliver
what is needed.
Effectiveness
8
Capacity Building
  • Builds on existing capacities
  • Promotes self mobilisation the search and
    discovery of a new way of doing things beginning
    with what is there already.
  • Mobilizes and motivates change from within a
    society or culture by helping what happens now to
    improve.

9
Approaches to Capacity Building
  • We will compare the
  • Traditional Problem Approach
  • Asks Why and where have you failed?
  • New Strength Approach
  • Asks What has worked What makes success?

10
Half empty or Half full
  • All societies has weaknesses and strengths,
    failure and successes, vulnerability and
    resilience
  • Traditionally we focused on the glass half empty
  • Some now choose to focus on the glass half full

11
Problem Tree Logic
  • Effects of the Problem
  • Problem
  • Causes of the Problem

Identify Core Problem
12
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13
Problem Tree Approach
  • Typically conducts a Strategic Analysis by means
    of the following
  • Needs Analysis
  • Gap Analysis
  • Root causes analysis
  • Key Problem identification and reasons for
    failure
  • Identifying the scares resources resource poor
  • Focuses on the weakest link
  • Looking for outside solutions to internal
    problems.

14
Focus on Deficits
  • focuses on segregated aspects of live, e.g
    water, nutrition, dentistry, maternal child care
    (rather than health promotion or healthy
    lifestyle),
  • Has to think of ways to include gender
    mainstreaming and peoples participation as add
    ons to the technical aspects.
  • often misses what is present, the strengths, the
    traditional wisdom and the potential solutions
    known but unable to be implemented

15
Underlying Message
  • You have many problems
  • Being good at identifying problems is a way to
    get attention and assistance
  • you will never achieve your own goals
  • You need a solution from somewhere else
  • So Dependence is desirable
  • Basic Assumption our current situation is a
    problem to be solved

16
Re-thinking Problem Analysis
  • Problem Analysis approaches begin with asking
    beneficiaries to list all the negative aspects of
    situation in which they find themselves.
    Identify their root problems
  • The potential beneficiaries end up with a long
    list of what is not going well or the many
    obstacles to their own development.
  • The general conclusion we leave them with is You
    have not been successful so far
  • The underlying message you will never achieve
    your goals
  • Unless you seek outside help and leave the
    solution to the outside donor/expert.

17
Strength Oriented
  • Focuses on the following activities.
  • Strengths Analysis
  • Asset Analysis
  • Identifies abundant resources i.e. untapped
    potential resource rich or mobilisation of
    resources
  • Looking for a way for people to address their own
    future challenges.

18
Strength Oriented
  • Focus on concepts such as
  • History of success
  • Description of what is.
  • Past achievements
  • Dreams based on what is possible
  • Designs based on mobilisation of resources and
    ownership of plans

19
Strength Approach
  • What have been the source and inspiration for a
    community
  • What has been the successes and the way they have
    achieved success so far
  • Creates conditions enabling people to discover,
    value and mobilise their own strengths, assets,
    wisdom and capabilities

20
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21
Strength Approach
  • We look to the past
  • For where we did it well before
  • We look to the future
  • For where we want to get to
  • Basic Assumption our current situation contains
    the source of our energy for a future we look
    forward to embracing

22
Principles of a positive approach
  • If you focus on the obstacle you repeatedly
    hit the obstacle
  • If you focus on the problems you find more
    problems
  • What you look for is what you end up with
  • If you focus on the way out you miss the
    obstacle and go in the direction you want
  • There is great energy in building on success

23
A Strength/Asset Approach
  • What has worked/ what works
  • What direction do we want to move towards
  • What assets exist now
  • What options are there for getting there (based
    on 1 2 above).
  • Lets begin now

24
5 D Cycle
Define Topic Choice
Discovery What gives life? (The best of what
is) Appreciating
Dream What might be? (What is the world calling
for) Envisioning Results
Deliver How to empower, learn, and
adjust/improvise? Sustaining
Positive Core
Design What Assets have we got Co-constructing


25
1. What works Discovery Phase
  • Delineation of peak moments when things worked in
    the past through stories shared by community
    members.
  • Identification of themes underlying those peak
    moments or key success factors

26
1. Focus on what works leads to
  • Improved self confidence
  • Inclusive participation
  • Creative ideas unexpected indicators of how
    things get done
  • Excitement and passion release with realisation
    of existing capacity
  • Transfer of responsibility (ownership) to local
    context

27
2.What direction Dream Phase
  • Articulation of new possibilities based upon the
    peak moments or success stories of the past
  • Embodiment of these possibilities into an agreed
    desirable future
  • Representing a commitment from all members of the
    group
  • Described in a statement, proposition, goal or
    vision.

28
2. This leads to
  • Clear vision and end goal determined from within
    the community
  • Evoking Imaginative, creative thinking
  • Problems turned into Objectives
  • Opportunity for debate among different sub-groups
    such as women, youth, poorer.

29
3. What assets Define/Determine
  • Analyse existing capacity and resource potential
  • To determine what contributions the community has
    to achieve their agreed goal
  • Divide up Assets into Human, Social, Physical,
    Natural and Financial
  • Or People skills, Organisations and Institutions
  • Head, Heart, Hands
  • Gender analysis and respective contributions

30
3 Looking for Assets leads to
  • Identify champions and leaders who demonstrate
    capacity
  • People seen as survivors not victims
  • Model behaviour becomes source of inspiration
  • Positive deviance spotlighted

31
4. What options Design Phase
  • Design based on what is possible, desirable and
    available resources
  • External resources supplement local contribution
    the donors contribution is now sought at this
    point
  • External technical expertise supplements and
    guides process directed and managed by the
    beneficiaries

32
5 Do it now Deliver Phase
  • Action Plan describes what the community think
    they can do beginning from the present
  • Based on their own resources
  • Immediate and tangible results identified
  • Immediate feedback, reflection and learning
  • Self confidence, self esteem reinforced

33
  • Based on Appreciative Inquiry this is a simple
    technique
  • It has been used successfully all over the world
    to
  • consult with people and learn from their
    experiences,
  • involve whole organizations and communities in
    change b
  • build a vision for the future that everyone can
    share and help put into practice.
  • . It is an approach that
  • engages people.
  • listening and communication skills and above all
    it
  • empowers individuals and demonstrates respect for
    each others views.

34
Five Elements of AI
  • The deeply valued in the past becomes the
    Desirable future
  • Shifts responsibility to local entity by building
    self esteem
  • Draw attention away from outsider back to local
    resources
  • Redefine problems towards desirable
    opportunities or objectives
  • Relinquish leadership role and set in motion
    expanding process

35
Eight Principles
  • Constructionist Principle Words create worlds
    meaning is socially created, through language
    conversations.
  • Principle of Simultaneity Inquiry creates
    change the moment we ask a question, we begin to
    create change
  • Poetic Principle We can choose what we study
    organizations, like open books, are endless
    sources of information learning.
  • Anticipatory Principle Human systems move in the
    direction of their images what we choose to
    study makes a difference.

36
Eight Principles Continued
Positive Principle Positive questions lead to
positive change.Wholeness Principle Wholeness
brings out the best in people organization
bringing all stakeholders together in a group
forum that stimulates creativity and builds
collective capacity.Enactment Principle To
really make change, we must be the change we
want to see.Free Choice Principle People
perform better and are more committed when they
have the freedom to choose how and what they want
to contribute.
37
Lessons learned from Strength Based Approaches
  • Capacity building involves the development of a
    cooperative consciousness generated by
    integrating two distinct processes
  • a historical recounting of what is deeply valued
    by community members (a reflective process) and
  • a collective inquiry into the communitys vision
    of its ideal future (an imaginative process).

38
Lessons learned from Strength Based Approaches
  • 2. Capacity building involves a fundamental shift
    in the locus of responsibility
  • communities and individuals reframe their
    accountability for their circumstances by moving
    in the direction of enhanced personal
    responsibility.

39
Lessons learned from Strength Based Approaches
  • 3. Capacity building helps refocus a communitys
    attention on the resources available to it
    locally
  • and by so doing helps the community mobilize
    local competencies in meeting the challenges of a
    particular situation..

40
Lessons learned from Strength Based Approaches
  • 4. Capacity building is facilitated through a
    process of reframing all the problem conditions
    into affirmative intentions or objectives -
  • When a problem condition is so described in terms
    of potential or objective it becomes a malleable
    construction amenable to reframing rather than as
    an objective condition existing independently in
    the external world.
  • I.e. teaching the person or group to view
    circumstances as possibilities calling to be
    realized rather than as causes of failure or lack
    of progress

41
Lessons learned from Strength Based Approaches
  • 5. Capacity building involves setting in motion
    locally driven patterns of change that find their
    own direction as part of the process of
    searching.
  • Interventions gather a momentum of their own as
    they move outward, encompassing more and more
    people in expanding circles of inquiry and
    dialogue around possibility.

42
5 key elements of the AI approaches
  • The deeply valued in the past
    Desirable future
  • Shift responsibility to local entity
    by building self esteem
  • Draw attention back to local
    resources
  • Redefine problems
    opportunities or objectives
  • Relinquish leadership role s et
    in motion expanding process

43
Successful Capacity Building Lessons from
Appreciative Inquiry Approaches.
  • engage participants in deep processes that honour
    participants capacity for constructive
    self-determination.
  • seek to create learning contexts in which
    participants become "turned on" to their own
    strengths and collectively experience an
    enhancement of their capacities.
  • enable recipient communities to invent creative
    responses to situations by delving into their own
    history and experience.

44
Case Study
  • PNG Basic Education Development Program Primary
    School Improvement
  • 3000 village school communities
  • Focused on increasing capacity of community to
    manage their own local school
  • Finding local solutions
  • Building a demand for better educational services
  • Gender equality a primary focus

45
BEDP uses a Strength Based Approach
  • Discover telling stories of successful efforts
    in the past and analyzing why they were
    successful
  • Dream - drawing up a proposition of where
    everyone wants to go in the future
  • Design - making a plan of action about how to
    get to our agreed future
  • Define make a list of all the assets you can
    contribute
  • Destiny how we are going to do it and keep
    reviewing it in the future.

46
The 5 Ds Process of BEDP
D1- DISCOVER
D1- We have done it before.
D5 We have an action plan start implementing
it.
D2 - DREAM
D2 We have a vision for our future.
D5 DELIVER/DO IT
D4 -DEFINE
D3-DESIGN
D3 We agree on what could be done.
D4 We have a list of our resources to draw from.
47
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50
An example of strength based
  • ABCD - Assets Based Approach to Capacity
    Development
  • Help people identify that they have something to
    contribute through story telling and a
    listening encouraging environment
  • Help people list and feel confident about
    assessing their assets

51
Models
  • Sustainable Livelihoods using 5 Capitals
  • Community Economies for Development
  • Assets Based Community Development (ABCD)
  • Appreciative Inquiry
  • Social Capital Strengthening
  • Positive Deviance in Nutrition
  • Ford Foundations Framework for Asset Buidling

52
Tools
  • Asset Mapping
  • Story Telling about past successes
  • Drama
  • Gender Analysis - what women men contribute
  • Success Analysis
  • Training capacity Analysis

53
Helen Keller said
  • "So much has been given to me, I have not time to
    ponder over that which has been denied."
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